


Teatime

by rasenna



Series: The Road is Long [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Cute Alien Kids, Fluff, Fluff With Very Little Plot, Gen, Kid Fic, Lance is Resistance Dad, Not Canon Compliant, Timestamp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-08
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2019-01-18 17:36:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12392844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rasenna/pseuds/rasenna
Summary: Sheer fluff, wherein a benched Lance babysits Saka.





	Teatime

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't read In the Hour of Darkness, you might want to read that. Otherwise, all you need to know is that in this 'verse Lance has escaped Galra slavery, joined the Resistance, and adopted a bunch of cute alien kids. Saka was born during the events of Chapter 7 of In the Hour of Darkness.
> 
> (Timestamp occurring about six months after the latest In the Hour of Darkness update.)

The Tarazos mission went badly, to say the least. It was supposed to have been a milk-run mission, low risk: Lance was to make friends with Princess Antilyë, crack a few jokes, keep an eye out for possible Galra sympathizers. But what the Resistance hadn’t known was that the Galra were already firmly entrenched on Tarazos, and Lance had only found out when the Tarazon high priestess had recognized him and promptly shouted for the palace guards. 

Which brings him to where he is now, broken arm in a sling and on light desk duty. The arm alone might not have been enough to get him benched, but when Lance had stumbled blearily out of his starfighter, his commanding officer had taken one look at him and told him his ass was out of commission for the next two weeks on account of both the arm and having run himself ragged the last few months.

 

Lance leans back in his chair and stretches without much satisfaction; he aches from both recent events and this damn desk job. He’s a soldier; he understands the necessity of it. Doesn’t mean he isn’t bored and stifled out of his mind. 

With a huff, Lance hunches back over the paperwork from the Antari mission last month,chair creaking in protest. Something about dimension hopping? It always sounds fun at first, but in the end it just creates a massive headache and a lot of paperwork for everyone. 

He doesn’t know how much time passes before someone waves a hand in front of his blurry vision. _Oh, blurring isn’t good_ , he thinks absently, blinking up at the new arrival. 

It’s Hyssyth, arching a ruefully amused eyebrow at him. Saka, in a little blue-gray poncho outfit, is perched on her hip, fingers jammed into their mouth and big eyes taking everything in. 

“‘Lejo!” the child cheers, reaching with their unoccupied hand for Lance. Saka is about the developmental equivalent of a human two-year-old, and aside from their moms, Lance is possibly the little Nomoi’s favorite person. It’s actually kind of funny if he thinks about it, and the rest of his unit keep teasing him about how much of a dad he is — there’s Saka, of course, and Nyalri and Utyne, and a rotation of the kids of other Resistance fighters. 

“Hey, kiddo,” Lance greets them, taking them into his own arms. The kid takes their fingers out of their mouth and grins toothily at him with all six of their teeth. _That’s just adorable_ , he thinks as he holds a hand out for them to grab. 

“Their moms are in a meeting with Nandi,” Hyssyth says, “and I’m supposed to be on babysitting duty but Kanda Zilli needs my help with the Lumilar project — can you take them for a little bit?” 

Lance can’t help but grin. “You have no idea how happy I am to have something to do that isn’t this damn paperwork,” he tells Hyssyth as he extricates his stylus from Saka’s surprisingly strong grip. “And how can I turn down time with my favorite princex?” 

Hyssyth opens her mouth, evidently to say thanks, but is interrupted by someone shouting her name in the distance. She shoots a rueful look at Lance before she jogs off, shouting, “Be right there, keep your frills on!”

“Just you ’n me now, kiddo,” Lance tells Saka, tapping their nose. 

Saka coos happily up at him. 

 

` An hour later, Lance is officially panicking. Saka is in that stage of toddlerhood where they’re prone to wandering about, shockingly fast, on wobbly little legs. They’re also clearly growing into a hellion. An adorable hellion, but a hellion nonetheless. Saka’s reputation for mischief, and then giggling innocently to get out of trouble, is already renowned across the Resistance.

Often, Saka likes Lance enough to at least keep their troublemaking in his general vicinity, but today they must be particularly inclined to give him gray hair. Lance had given Saka a tablet to play with, which would usually completely absorb them for hours, and returned to frowning at his forms. Then, not five minutes later, he’d looked down to check on his tiny charge and gotten a nasty shock. The tablet and accompanying stylus lay abandoned, and Saka had been nowhere in sight. 

Which brings Lance to where he is now: searching for a missing Nomoi princex while muttering about how Hyssyth and her aunts are going to _murder him_.

Someone calls, “Alejo!” and Lance turns to see Dara Statil, a tall celadon-skinned Latitya, 

hurrying to catch up with him. Dara’s daughter Tenoda has become thick as thieves with Nyalri in recent months, leading Lance and Dara to become occasional Aloran maze-chess partners and co-witnesses to the joys and struggles of parenting.

“Hey, Dara,” Lance pants. “You need something?” 

Dara’s expressions are a little hard to read, as is common with more insectoid-patterned beings, but Lance is fairly certain she’s giving him an unimpressed look. “Would you have anything to do with the small purple child that’s absolutely taken over Navtel? They’ve got half the division wrapped around their little finger. It was cute at first, but it’s officially causing us problems now.” 

“Oh, quiznak,” Lance says feelingly. Dara is a lieutenant colonel in the Resistance’s Navigational Intelligence division; they’re the most badass mapmakers Lance has ever met. (Not that he’d met many mapmakers before coming to the Resistance.) 

Oh sweet Christ, Lance is never going to live this down.

 

Dara leads Lance, who has not yet stopped feeling like throwing himself into the nearest hole, to the Navtel offices. Even before she opens the door for him with a sardonic wave of her ID, Lance can hear Saka’s delighted laughter bubbling out from under the door. 

Lance braces himself as the door slides open, and — oh. It’s even worse than he was expecting. 

All of the desks have been pushed aside, and Saka is holding court amidst a ragged circle of what Lance can scarcely believe are decorated Navtel officers. Several of them appear to have glitter all over themselves, and more than one seem to be decked out in hastily-assembled costumes of scrap fabric. Every last one has an empty cup in hand. Saka themself is perched on a chair much too high for them — their legs dangle far above the ground — waving around a cup of their own and babbling imperiously. 

Lance cannot believe his life. He looks away for _five minutes_ , and the child he’s babysitting makes a run for it and wanders into _teatime_ with hardened military officers.

As he stands in the doorway, gaping, Saka notices him and breaks into a gappy grin. “Alejo!” they squeal. Lance barely acknowledges the pronunciation milestone as a roomful of said hardened military officers suddenly realize that he’s a witness to their humiliation. Based on their facial expressions at the moment, he has no doubt that if he breathes a word of this, he’ll suddenly find himself at their (lack of) mercy. 

“No worries, guys,” he absolutely does not squeak. “I saw nothing, I’m just here for the kid!” 

Saka turns an impressive pair of puppy eyes on him, and Lance wonders how it is that every child on this base knows Alejo Arteaga-Mendez is a pushover with appropriate leverage (puppy eyes). 

“Yeah, Saka, that’s you,” he says. “I know you’ve made a lot of new friends, but your cousin told me to keep an eye on you, and I gotta do that, okay?” 

Saka’s pout deepens, and Lance sighs. 

From behind him, Dara coughs. “Your Highness, as much as we’ve enjoyed your stay with us, I’m afraid teatime will have to wait for another day.” She pauses, and then adds pointedly, “I suppose you can visit over our lunch break tomorrow. Lieutenant Abrax can show you our map projector, _can’t he_?” 

An alarmed young Mon Calamari officer with a ceremonial Rewill scarf draped over his head splutters, setting the bells sewn into the scarf jangling; under Dara’s uncompromising stare, Abrax eventually subsides into glum acquiescence. 

Lance knows the feeling.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. The Antari mission is a reference to V.E. Schwab's most excellent Shades of Magic books.  
> 2\. Dara Statil is designed along the lines of a praying mantis. Her daughter Tenoda is based on an orchid mantis. Keep an eye out for the Statils; Dara, her wife Kena, and Tenoda will all be recurring characters later on.  
> 3\. You probably got this, but poor Lieutenant Abrax is a Mon Calamari, the Star Wars species of Admiral Ackbar fame.


End file.
